Affordability Passport®

What is the Affordability Passport?

How well do you know your customers?

How can you be sure your customer can afford the financial product they want? Most financial retailers have to depend primarily on credit ratings which can only tell part of the customer’s story. But imagine if you could shine a spotlight right into a customer’s bank account – and analyse not just their income but, much more importantly, exactly how they spend it.

Castlight’s Affordability Passport® is a unique web-based technology which allows you to offer customers a secure platform through which they can share transactional data from their bank accounts, providing you with a clear and comprehensive picture of their income and expenditure.

Why Do We Need Affordability Tools?

Who is it for?

How does it work?

Categorisation and data analytics

The powerful technology platform breaks down the customer’s expenditure, across any number of accounts, into a range of categories, summarising essential costs and credit commitments and revealing a monthly disposable income.

This information is merged with credit performance data and, within a few minutes, you can access your customer’s Affordability Passport®. Today’s consumers are used to fast, interactive answers. Most financial retailers can’t deliver that. With Castlight’s Affordability Passport® – you can.

The Affordability Passport® will tell you everything you need to know about your customer’s financial well-being. And then, just like high street bank managers used to do, you can use your experience and judgment to make lending and credit decisions.

Is your customer in a good position for the financial journey they have in mind? Castlight’s Affordability Passport® will let you both know.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Which of our customers can benefit from an Affordability Passport®?

All your customers will benefit from a faster, clearer and fairer assessment of their financial wellbeing.

Customers locked out of the credit market because they have thin files – perhaps because they are young, have moved recently or who have been working abroad, will have an opportunity to demonstrate exactly what they are able to afford.

How does the financial retailer benefit from Affordability Passport® technology?

In addition to achieving a full and clear picture of your customer’s financial capability, financial retailers can significantly reduce the processing time of offering loans. For instance, a mortgage broker’s affordability fact find can be reduced from 2 hours to less than 5 minutes.

Is the Affordability Passport® shared with the customer?

Yes. The Affordability Passport® is a transparent resource which is shared with the customer.

Who owns the Affordability Passport®

At the moment, the Affordability Passport® is operating on a platform designed specifically for financial retailers and the financial retailer who commissions the affordability passport will own it.

How long does the Affordability Passport® last for?

The Affordability Passport is date stamped to show that the information is up to date and therefore accurate. The length of time the Affordability Passport® lasts for will vary by lender, however, this will typically be 30 days to keep in line with credit bureau updates.

What if the answer is no?

If the result of the Affordability Passport® process recommends that the customer is not able or ready to take on a loan, they will still benefit from a new financial clarity. The process will shine a spotlight onto their finances, highlighting the distribution of their spending and giving them an opportunity to make changes.

Do customers have to give us their online banking information?

Yes, the technology requires for customers to enter their online banking information using a secure link. The secure link will provide you with a short access window to the customer’s bank accounts.

Is the process secure for customers?

Castlight is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and customer security is at the heart of everything that we do. We conduct an address match and anti-money laundering check, before providing a secure link to the customer in order to access their transactional information. Once we have accessed the consumer’s account, we instantly delete all of the login details to ensure there is no future risk to the consumer’s information. These details are never stored and never accessed again without the customer’s input.

Is this a new technology?

Castlight’s directors have been using this technology very successfully in the credit space for over a year. Changes are shortly to be brought in by the Competition and Marketing Authority which will require banks to introduce an open application programming interface and share their customers’ transaction history safely and securely with other banks and third parties. That means any financial retailer, already using Castlight’s Affordability Passport® technology will be ahead of the game and benefit from a significant competitive advantage.